With advancements in computing and automation technologies, users have experienced an increase in receiving communications originating from unknown phone numbers. For example, robocalls are calls from phone numbers using a computerized autodialer to deliver a pre-recorded message. Similar technologies may be used for other types of communication, such as text messages or messages through social media networks. Such technologies may be used by spammers or fraudulent users. Spammers are unwanted callers that may be calling indiscriminately to a large number of recipients. Fraudulent users may include users with malicious intent that are pretending to be someone they are not.
Communications received from unknown phone numbers may make the identifies of the callers difficult to ascertain, and therefore difficult for a user to take any action to manage such calls and/or messages. Conventional methods for identifying incoming communications may not accurately capture the nature of the communication originator. For example, a method of classifying incoming communications may utilize minimum thresholds for various actions that users may have taken for calls from such numbers. The thresholds may specify that to classify a phone number as spam, the phone number must have been blocked by 10 users, reported by 50 users, and/or missed or rejected by 100 users. However, such thresholds may not be easily met, despite the phone number being spam or fraudulent. The phone number may be a temporary number that spam only a limited number of users for a limited or short period of time. User actions for such phone numbers may never reach the thresholds specified above, resulting in the phone number never being classified as spam. Additionally, the collection of data, usually manually provided by users in response to receiving unsolicited communications, may take time and, for newly encountered spam numbers, the time to meet the minimum thresholds to be classified as spam may be lengthy, which may leave, in the interim, the users without any guidance for classifying the unrecognized phone calls.
The instant disclosure, therefore, identifies and addresses a need for systems and methods for identifying unsolicited communications on a computing device.